


In Order

by schmerzerling



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Vignette, dean's a fucked up lil baby and here's why
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-03-31
Packaged: 2019-04-16 11:20:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14163717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schmerzerling/pseuds/schmerzerling
Summary: Winchester spring cleaning.





	In Order

**Author's Note:**

> I guess I'll finally post this! Written for the SPN Seasons Anthology back in 2017. There are physical copies of the actual book available if people want to pick em up! It's a pretty cool project.
> 
> Enjoy!

Sam looks up from a map of storm systems to find Dean isn’t beside him anymore. Probably hasn’t been for some time if the lack of condensation on his beer bottle is any indication. But he hears the distinct rattle of a metal spray can down the hall, and he follows it to find Dean, on his knees in one of the bunker’s spare rooms and smelling strongly of lemon. There’s zero ventilation to speak of in the bunker, so the ammonia-heavy fumes of cleaning solutions hang heavy and toxic over Dean’s head as he polishes a shine into the cement floor. 

Sam knows what the rest of the rooms in the bunker look like. They’ve only bothered cleaning the ones he and Dean and Cas live in, so the rest are still covered in layers of dust so thick they’re more like dirt, caked on and tacky and opaque enough to leave clearly defined footprints in. So Dean has been at work for a while—it looks like he took a damn pressure washer to the walls and floor, and he stripped the bed and remade it so the sheets look clean and inviting. He remembers Dean doing the same for Cas, years ago, when he was new and human and loved the feel of anything soft between his fingers. 

Sam clears his throat. Dean stops cleaning, sits back on his haunches, but doesn’t look at him. He’s probably lightheaded from all the citrus.

“Mom’ll need a place to stay,” he says thickly. “If she comes back.”

“When,” Sam says. “When she comes back.” 

Dean starts polishing again.

* * *

They hardly ever go to the dry cleaner for their monkey suits and jackets, usually only when necessity forces them to, and even then, if the suits are covered in blood, they’ll sooner exhaust a credit card buying new ones than waste their time trying to salvage something that’s not worth salvaging.

So it’s a little surprising when Dean pops into a dry cleaner on their way out of town, pops out just as quick with a black bag on a wire hanger. Something he dropped off when Sam wasn’t looking. Sam sits in the front seat burning with curiosity while Dean takes his time around back rummaging in the trunk. It’s a mess back there, no place for freshly laundered anything, but Dean doesn’t volunteer information and Sam doesn’t ask. He can recognize the tight, familiar  _ I-don’t-want-to-talk-about-it  _ twitch at the corner of his mouth. 

Sam almost forgets about it until a week later when, pulling machetes from the trunk before they raid a vamp nest, he catches a telltale whiff of detergent coming from the meticulously folded lump of Castiel’s old trenchcoat, nestled into a discreet corner of the trunk.

“They told me to throw it out,” Dean says, inspecting the blade of his machete. “At the dry cleaner.”

“Why?” Sam says.

Dean shrugs, flippant, a humorless smile. “It wouldn’t come clean.”

* * *

Dean cracks a vertebra on a gravestone in a Louisiana cemetery and ends up stuck in what the doctors call a Minerva brace. It looks like a torture device, and for Dean, it’s probably as good as one, covering his chest, choking up under his jaw, wrapping around his head, keeping his whole upper body locked into Mary-Poppins posture.

Dean snaps and hisses, all venom, on the way back from the hospital, suffering already in the humid southern springtime. Sam can see sweat dripping from under the collar, bubbling at his forehead, pooling under his armpits and the heavy plastic on his chest. And three days into an interminable slog in a hotel room, Dean dozes miserably, breathing shallow to stave off the pain, never finding sleep. Sam sees him swipe at his hair where it falls greasy and heavy into his eyes, sees him twitch uncomfortably. He remembers how long it’s actually been since Dean had a proper shower, how long it’ll be before he’s able to have another one. 

How Hell must’ve been like this. Sweaty and uncomfortable and painful and unyielding. 

“Alright, alright. Up,” he says to Dean, interrupting another rumbling bout of complaints against the television. Dean blinks at him. “Up.”

He leads Dean to the bathroom, sits him backwards in front of the sink on a bench from the kitchenette, and eases his head back until he can rest the metal of the brace against the sink’s stained enamel. Dean, too tired to protest much, makes a show of enduring the first careful wash of warm water on his scalp, but he clearly relishes in the second like a happy cat, a contented purr curling up behind the unhappy growl. His muscles loosen at the feel of gentle hands in his hair. And when he’s back in bed smelling like Sam’s secret lavender shampoo, clean as he’s been since before the accident, he goes to sleep easy as anything.  

* * *

“C’mon, Sammy,” Dean says, clapping him on the shoulder. Sam shakes himself from whatever stupor he’s existing in and realizes it’s dark and they’re sitting in front of a twenty-four-hour laundromat, probably have been for a while. Dean’s got that earnest angst in his eyes that says he had to call Sam’s name maybe one too many times. He pats Sam’s shoulder again.

“Nothin’ a pair of clean underoos can’t fix, little brother.”

Sam hadn’t realized how disgusting he actually felt until Dean pointed it out, and now he’s hyperfocused on it, the itchy-skin sensation of clothes gone too long without washing.

Inside, it smells familiar. Basic, slippery. Wet, soapy. 

Dean says, “Strip.” 

Sam does. When they’re both in their underwear, the laundromat quiet but for the buzzing of the fluorescent lights, Dean uses a multitool to crack open the coin machine in the corner. It vomits a steady stream of quarters into a waiting laundry bag, and Dean bounces his eyebrows, proud.  _ Jackpot _ . 

Sam doesn’t say anything. It’s one petty theft he mostly forgot about in his time at Stanford. And it could make him feel dirty—about this whole thing, about coming back to this life, but it doesn’t. He can’t feel anything but relieved at the easy, pure familiarity of sitting on a gently rocking washing machine in his underwear, criss-cross-applesauce with a pile of cards between his legs.

Dean grins a white grin. “Got any threes?” 

* * *

“Winchester spring cleaning,” Dad says, clapping Dean on the back. He sits them both down at a creaking hotel table overburdened with gun oil, dirty rags, barrel rods, bore brushes, and a pile of pistols and semiautomatics. And he leaves.

On television, spring cleaning is a singing mom in an apron who polishes the silverware until she can see her face in it, who throws the doors open and sweeps all the cobwebs out. Winchester spring cleaning is his older brother staring hard down the barrel of a gun. It’s grinding the edge of a machete down until it’s sharp enough to put a knick in his skin when he lays his thumb against it. 

They polish every piece to gleaming, and when Dad inspects it all the next morning, laying everything, item by careful item, back into the trunk, Dad looks proud. 

“Good job, boys,” Dad says. “Being sloppy never got anyone anywhere. You remember that.”

Dean furrows his brow, a serious effort to disguise his enthusiasm, before he snaps off a crisp salute.

“Yes, sir.”


End file.
